


honesty looks good on you

by Fixy



Category: Killing Eve (TV 2018)
Genre: Angst, Blood, But you do you, Death, F/F, First time for everything!, POV Second Person, like I wouldn’t read this bc I hate angst, no happy ending, plain old misery, really though don’t read it if you’re expecting it to have anything nice at all in it, this is just angst
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-12-31
Updated: 2020-12-31
Packaged: 2021-03-10 21:48:39
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,907
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28454133
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Fixy/pseuds/Fixy
Summary: Apparently, you made a choice.
Relationships: Eve Polastri/Villanelle | Oksana Astankova
Comments: 32
Kudos: 113





	honesty looks good on you

**Author's Note:**

> THIS IS NOT HAPPY. 
> 
> For spayne and hhhenrymercury, the masochists.

You have imagined it countless times. 

You have imagined the ways it could happen, where it could happen, why it could happen. You have imagined yourself as the star, the leading role, the executioner. You have imagined yourself at the sidelines, a voyeur, conveniently passing by. You have imagined waking up and hearing the news, from him or from them or from your own investigation. 

You have imagined it countless times, but not recently. 

You haven’t recently imagined her death. 

It’s been fairly… what is the word for thoughts absent of anger? What is it when you feel everything  _ but _ anger? Maybe there is no word. At least, you don’t know it, if there is one. But that’s how it’s been since the bridge. 

You say it’s since the bridge but you know it’s been longer. Since the bus. When anger overtook all else and you’d been left with a black eye and bloody nose, feeling in no way better about anything. You rode that bus to the end of the line and back around again before heading into work, leaving the evidence of your anger to crust on your upper lip.

Since it changed, you’ve had no anger, because anger doesn’t do you any good. Where it used to motivate, now it exhausts. That’s not to say you are no longer motivated or passionate or argumentative, it’s just that now you don’t feel that boiling hurt in your chest that hurtles you into action that never works out well for you. 

And so with the lack of anger has come the lack of murderous imaginings, because, truthfully, you do not want Villanelle to die. Not anymore. Not ever. Have you ever, really? The jury is still out on that one. Maybe at points, fleeting moments, entire days, but not anymore. 

It seems you only realise this with certainty, now, as she sits slumped against your living room wall, leaking blood onto the floorboards and the fringe of your rug. 

It doesn’t matter how it got to this, how you both got to be here or why she’s injured or why you can’t feel the tips of your fingers. All that matters is you are, she is and you can’t. 

“Eve.” She’s trying to keep her voice controlled, you can hear the strain in it. “It’s okay.”

Is it okay? Villanelle’s blood seems to be everywhere, a great spray of the stuff on the wall behind her transitioning into a heavy smear leading to where she now sits.

From your crouched position you reach a shaky hand out to touch her cheek. She leans into it, eyes half closing, a weak sigh shuddering her form. 

“You’re cold,” you mumble into the quiet air.

“Blood loss will do that to you,” she smiles gently, “lose between 15% and 30% and your skin will start to lose its colour.”

“Is… is that how much you’ve lost?”

“Am I pale?”

You dart nervous eyes across her face, that beautifully sculpted face that haunts and taunts and delights you.

“Yes.” You whisper. 

“A shame,” she’s still smiling, “blue is not really my colour.”

“Everything is your colour,” you manage to admonish her, but the deep crimson splashed across her torso is definitely not. 

“Figures it would take a bullet to the chest for you to be sweet to me,” Villanelle chuckles wetly. 

You don’t know what to do with yourself. You should be helping her, shouldn’t you? Or, wait, you already tried. You already tried to help but she told you it was too late. Too late for what?

“Why is it too late?” You ask her suddenly. Have you already asked? You slide to your knees and hover your free hand over the hole in her chest. 

“You cannot help the dead, Eve.” Villanelle tells her softly. 

“You aren’t dead.”

“Eve,” Villanelle whispers out a laugh, “I am. But it’s okay.”

“It’s not okay.” You hear your voice as if underwater, that different level of existence where all is muted. “It’s… we need to call someone.”

“Don’t,” Villanelle lifts her head up away from your hand, “not yet. Wait with me.”

“Wait for what?”

Villanelle let’s her head drop lightly to the wall behind her with a smile. 

“You are really not getting this.” She says to you. “Just… sit with me. Stay here. Okay?”

Okay. You can do that. You should be helping but, but you can sit with her with your numb fingertips and blurred hearing instead, if that’s what she wants. 

“Do you want to talk about it?” She asks you. 

You frown in confusion. She’s looking at you with bloodshot eyes, brows raised in question, beautiful blonde hair limp and matted at the back where it slid through her own blood. She’s stunning, as always, as she always has been, always will be, the bitch.

“Talk about what?” You say as she sit next to her, your side pressing into the wall as you focus solely on her with your legs folded under yourself. 

“About why you hesitated.”

“Hesitated?” You aren’t sure what she’s talking about. Maybe the blood loss is affecting her brain. What’s the percentage of blood loss before traumatic shock? 

“When he shot me.” Villanelle says quietly. “You had the chance to shoot him first, but you hesitated.”

“I… I didn’t…” you frown harder, but Villanelle only smiles. 

“You did. It’s okay.” She tries to turn herself towards you but only makes it halfway before grunting in pain and crumbling in on herself. She leans heavily against the wall once more. “You could have shot him before he shot me. You chose not to.”

“That’s not… no…”

Villanelle isn’t making any sense. The blood loss. But, but how did they get here? Maybe it does matter, maybe it does matter. Prepping for… something. Men burst in, launch for you. Villanelle takes two down but is kicked hard by the third, and in that moment as she stood panting against the wall, you found a gun in your hands, aimed at his head.

_ Eve, please, _ she managed to say, and your finger found the trigger. For a moment he paused and she paused and you paused, and you, you, pulled the trigger. 

“I pulled the trigger.” You tell her, shaking your head. “I did.”

“You did,” Villanelle’s smile is weak, “but after him. Don’t you remember?”

“No,” no, yes, yes, “yes, I… god, I was too late. Too slow, I-”

“Eve,” Villanelle chuckles, “you were not too slow. You made a choice.”

How many choices does one make in life. How many have affected nothing, how many have affected everything. Choosing to chase a ball into the street might seem like a choice without consequence, until you find out that the man in the car that had to brake suddenly to avoid hitting you had a weak heart, and the shock caused his heart attack only hours later. You read that in a book. Small can lead to big, and reversed, and flipped, and the gaps in between. 

Choices and consequences. 

Is this a choice you made? The matter of how you got here seems grainy, poorly filtered and missing sound. Is your brain already trying to block it out? Did you truly make the choice to let that man shoot her?

“I didn’t… I meant to shoot-”

“Eve, enough.” Her smile is imploring as she lifts a bloody hand to grasp loosely at yours. You wrap your hand tightly around her fingers. “Stop lying to yourself. You deserve more than that.”

God, you do lie a lot, to no one more so than yourself. A lifetime of repressed emotion breeds verbal convictions that mean nothing, really. Entirely transparent. 

She’s looking at you with such tenderness, even as her skin loses more of its sweet pink flush, leaving behind shadowy hollows beneath sharp edges that lack all of their usual desirability. She’s frail. She’s not okay. 

“I…” you swallow hard, hold her hand tighter. You’re starting to feel your fingers again. Her eyes are still so hazel, the only colour of Villanelle left. “I chose to… I let him shoot you.”

Villanelle smiles prettily. The corners of her eyes crinkle, a flash of who you know fully fleshed out for a second. 

“See?” She murmurs, happy. “Honesty looks good on you.”

“Why did I let him?” You ask her. “Why would I do that?”

Villanelle manages a one shouldered shrug. 

“I don’t know.”

“Are you mad at me?” Of all the things to ask her, you ask her this, like some self-centred child, like a nervous girlfriend. 

“Oh, Eve,” she sighs with a smile, and you push some hair away from her face. Her skin is sticky with sweat. “Eve, I am absolutely furious.”

You laugh. Of course you laugh, because what else are you supposed to do when she delivers lines like that while bleeding against your fucking living room wall?

“Are you really?” You chuckle, now just running fingers through damp hair. 

“No,” she murmurs, “not mad. Never at you.”

“You should be.”

“I should be.”

It’s quiet for a while. You brush through her hair with careful fingers while holding her other hand, ignoring the way it feels colder and colder in yours. 

Her eyes are so, so hazel. 

“Keep… keep looking at me.” Her voice is weaker. “Just, don’t look away. Promise? Okay?”

“Okay,” you whisper. 

You realise you’re crying. Wet cheeks and a tremble to your voice, and it hits you then that she’s dying. You knew this, she’s told you this, but… you  _ know _ it now. 

It… it  _ chokes _ you. 

“No, fuck,” you blurt out, the hand in her hair moving to her face, holding a pallid cheek firmly, “Vil, don’t- please- come on.”

“Ah, she catches on.” Villanelle smiles. “Hello.”

“Stop it,” you sniff, your breathing picks up in panic, “don’t joke. You’re… you can’t die. I’m calling someone, there’s still time.”

“Eve, look at me, you promised.” She doesn’t sound so amused now.

You look at her. Hazel burns against sickly white. She’s beautiful, she’s  _ beautiful _ . 

“Please, don’t do this.” You whisper wetly. “Please.” 

You’ll resort to begging, you’ll pray, for fuck’s sake, you’ll, youll-

You did this. She didn’t do anything. This was you. No use asking her not to, you took the choice away from her and made it yourself.

“You didn’t do this.” She reads your mind. “This is not your fault.”

“It is-”

“Not your fault.” Villanelle shakes her head adamantly. It looks like it hurts. You shuffle closer. Press your foreheads together. “Do not think that. I will be mad if you think that.”

“Don’t be mad at me,” you whisper. Anything but that. 

“Then promise me.” and god, she lifts her shaky hand and shows you her pinky finger. “Come on.”

You link your little finger with hers. You have to. You’d never refuse her this. 

The softest pressure, then Villanelle let’s go, her hand dropping heavily. She’s smiling again. 

“Just look at me,” voice thin like air, “look at me.”

You hold her hand, hold her delicate cheek, feel your heart thick in your throat. 

You have imagined it countless times, but not recently. 

Now, you don’t need to imagine. There’s a pain in that irony that will never not rip you apart, you know. You know. 

“Eve.” She mumbles with a smile. “Look at me.”

You are looking. 

You look. 

You look. 

You look,

until she stops looking.

**Author's Note:**

> If this is the first fic of mine you’ve read then I’m very sorry, they’re usually sunshine and daisies I swear 
> 
> follow me on twitter @fixyfics!


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